Lethargy Begins at Home: The Academic Rate-Buster and the Academic Sloth

Abstract

The “publish or perish” imperative has become academe's version of global warming; no issue inspires so much vexation and so little action. The pressure on professors to publish early and often is sustained by numerous parties, yet some are more complicit than others. I have in mind a genus of scholar whom we might call the academic rate-buster, the high-output workhorses of academe. This article contends that the performance of professional ideology of the rate-buster is unsustainable and delineates an alternative ideology and performance of academic sloth.

Keywords:

• Sloth
• Rate-Buster
• Academe
• Writing
• Publishing

Notes

1. For a more thoroughgoing critique of Chesebro's article, see Bach et al On porn stars’ prolificacy, see Faludi.

2. See “An Artist's Artist.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rob Drew

Rob Drew is Associate Professor of Communication at Saginaw Valley State University and author of Karaoke Nights: An Ethnographic Rhapsody